The new GUI doesn't correctly toggle gconf/system/http_proxy/use_http_proxy to true when only a socks server is specified. Without this, neither Chrome nor Firefox will attempt to tunnel through socks. As a workaround, set this value manually using gconf-editor.

Reproduce by setting up a socks server using the standard ssh -D <port> <user>@<remote_machine>. Attempt to configure the system-wide proxy by entering localhost and <port> into the new 11.10 proxy configuration utility's socks server fields. Open Chrome or Firefox and change the app's proxy settings to "use system". Notice that no HTTP traffic tunnels through the system socks proxy.

Somewhat related: the ignored hosts list is very useful for users on corporate networks where they do need some internal resources. It should be included.

Good find, yeah that sounds similar. Probably these apps just don't use gsettings yet. Maybe a bugfix then would just be to special case: any string present in the server fields indicates HTTP proxy on when gluing gsettings -> gconf.

Thanks for the prompt response. Most of the people where I work just use Firefox so they can set the proxy manually, but I prefer Chrome (which forces you to use system settings). I had to regress the gconf settings of 11.4 vs. 11.10 before I could figure out why it wasn't working.

As with the banshee bug (which I just uploaded a fix for), this needs changes in the applications, not gnome-control-center. We have stopped using some of the keys, so their values are not changed in GSettings and hence not propagated to GConf. Those apps should really check the host for socks, and if it's not empty, use it. So I guess there's nothing in g-c-c / g-s-d that can be done to fix this.

Proxy settings on oneiric just don't work. I just don't understand how functionality and value was reduced from natty and all its ancestors, and the people are only finger pointing - this bug is similar to that and that bug was addressed by so and so...

There is a button for applying proxies system wide. The button does not work most of the time. It doesn't ask for a sudo password most of the time. It does not modify /etc/environment. It does not create any proxy settings in /etc/apt/conf.d/

It looks like this will *never* be fixed.
Whatever bug you file - it will be similar to some other bug.

Ok so following the advice on gconf and dconf it seems like system wide settings work for chrome, and that is about it. Firefox, spotify etc. all need to be updated in their respective settings.

Also this problem means I am unable to run VPN as it depends on system wide setting of proxy works. Sorry to say it but the lack of progress on this issue since the release will probably lead me to change to Windows 7. Ubuntu has become all to unreliable for professional use when it comes to proxy settings and working in a corporate environment.

This also means no one at work will upgrade to 11.10, and likely it is end of life for Ubuntu at our workplace. Best of luck.

As I already said, gnome control center does not use GConf anymore for this, since a year already, so what we need is a list of apps that still use GConf, and we need to migrate them to use GSettings or, as a fallback, make them use the correct GConf keys. This specific GConf keys are not used anymore on the GSettings version, so even though we have the GConf keys synced up with their corresponding GSettings keys (via a plugin in gnome-settings-daemon), of course only the keys that are changed in GSettings are synced. This means that the keys we don't use will always have the same value in GConf.

So could people list the applications affected, or even better, add a task to this bug for that specific app, so that the responsible for each of those apps can have a look at patching it. But again, there's nothing that can be done in gnome-control-center/gnome-settings-daemon